The present invention generally relates to apparatus and methods for collecting voting or opinion data such as by market survey or political ballot and, more particularly, to apparatus and methods of automatically collecting consensus voting data from a pool of voters presented with two, three or four contestants.
Typically, the traditional method of collecting consensus data is to use polls to do market surveys or ballots to conduct political or other contests through the use of questionnaire and surveys that are done predominantly by intrusive methods such as telemarketing or focus groups and less effective ways such as mailings. However, this process requires a delivery and data collection system that is cumbersome and not cost effective. As a result the validity and generalization of the results may be adversely affected by events such as low response rate, limited financial and human resources, and the like. Further, the traditional method lacks the flexibility to accommodate the fast changing dynamics of an interactive world.
In addition, psychological studies show that short term memory (the capacity to hold in mind in an active highly available state a small amount of information such as 5 to 9 words or other elements) holds a small amount of information for only about 20 seconds. Voters therefore do not necessarily remember all candidates at the same time when selecting a single winner. Thus, our human limitations may inadvertently yield inaccurate results using traditional methods.
Nevertheless, it is very important and useful to collect consensus data from large amounts of people for the valuable information it may yield. Moreover, there is a need to collect data on the consensus of a pool of voters that maximizes the insight and analysis that can flow from such data and there is a need to collect such data in a more efficient, systematic and dynamic manner. There is also a need to have a data collection/voter system that is also suitable for a contest where most of the entrants are also voters, e.g. a fashion show, a dog show, a costume contest, where each contestant uploads their entry and also votes as in a presidential election.